Naphtha wrote: ↑Wed Feb 06, 2019 7:10 pm
So I've given the demo a full run-through on both Ace and Insane, and it's pretty solid. Thoughts per level so far, to be taken with a grain of salt:
Level 1: There is more to explore than you might expect, but it gets the job done as a fairly quick and easy opener. Placement is great, and my only suggestion would be to add a robot behind the first red door, most likely at the end of the grated hallway. It does feel like the exit's pretty far from the reactor for the first level, but at least it's doable on Insane (if you know how to trichord, that is). Relatively simple and yet stands out in its own way, which is great.
Good call about that additional robot after the red door. Also, I've been meaning to add some meaningless eye candy cubes to this level so that it looks a bit more professional and less rectangular, but I'll do it at my leisure. The exit is far, yes, but there is no opposition to slow you down, so it's not such a big deal.
Level 2: It was a nice touch to have a Headlight Boost available already, as just a hint of D2 elements without upsetting the difficulty balance. I was also questioning that long dead end at first, but it made more sense to me after I passed it up on the second play. Having all those lifters in the red key room was particularly tricky for me on Insane. Not sure if anyone else found that too difficult, though.
Do you mean the hostage cell? If not, probably the "dead end" with the class 2 drones, which as you've probably realized, isn't really a dead end. Or the area where you get the vulcan? Well, Descent 1 did take some detours from the main linear progression of the level too. Plus it looks cool so I believe it can stay.
Level 3: Probably my favorite of the early levels, but somehow there's not much to comment on aside from a very sharp angle here or there. The little hint of Vertigo with the conveyor belt-like floor strip was a nice touch, and having the Canary as one of the tougher bots was a great choice since they're fairly average on speed, durability and firepower. And you know how I wish Vertigo had given them more appearances, after all...
Level 4: Before touching on the level difficulty, I'm wondering if
this one-unit-deep cube should be adjusted. [/quote]
Well, it doesn't give any errors in the editor, plus this combination of bright and dark red makes the ceiling look actually quite cool, so I can dig it.
You got the Smelter 2 to work this early on without being too nasty, so that's definitely a good thing. I might be wrong about this, but the Supervisor Droid seems to get other bots even more riled up in D2 than in D1. It's a massive difference on higher skill levels, which is why I only placed them in a few levels of Plutonian Shores.
Yes, because it sets robots to snipe mode apparently, while I don't think that was even a thing in D1. In D1 I believeit just alerted other robots to your attention and made them roam (which could still be a huge problem because of D1's architecture).
It's also worth checking if the double matcen behind yellow door goes from a significant chokepoint to full-on frustration on Insane... If you need to change one of the fly-through triggers so that it only trips once, would that break the D1 motif?
I definitely think that at least that one trigger where you just fly into the little alcove to the left of the matcen to grab some goodies should be removed. And in fact, all others could be set to one-shot, since this is the level that introduces matcens and it shouldn't go all out with them like this. I believe D1 allowed for one-shot matcens, though I'm not sure - but it's definitely not something that would break the motif. I'll take care of it myself.
Level 5: In retrospect, I probably should've asked if you were against me moving the exit into the red door area when I built it for you. I actually died in the mine on Insane. The green theme for robots works very well and for the most part, the difficulty feels appropriate, but putting that second Supervisor Droid right next to the Medium Hulks is pretty nasty combo for this early on.
Maybe not the red chamber, but what about the top of the central hub chamber? It should be about 5-6 seconds quicker to reach than the current location of the exit, which could be changed into something else with no issues. Then again, there is some rather elaborate lighting on that ceiling, so the boss chamber itself works nice too. So far, exits have been pretty distant in all the 5 levels (except maybe 3 and to a lesser extent 2), so making an easy to reach exit would probably be a welcome breather. Then again, racing against the clock to the current exit was also something I found nerve-wracking in just the right way. I loved the tension
And the supervisor was Alter-Fox's idea. It can indeed be nasty, but hey - you've got 2 invulnerabilities there, so I guess it can be excused. These robots are indeed a rare sight to behold, which is unfortunate.
The levels also had some good music choices, with either Level 1 or 4 as my favorite so far. No disrespect meant for Alter-Fox, but I'm just not too keen on vocal-driven music in Descent levels. A little bit of vocals here or there as a sample seems to work, but the full song approach doesn't do it for me personally. They're great tracks otherwise, though.
There must have been some file update then. The last version I have still hasn't any of the custom music - and the previous, level-assigned midis removed. I need to check that out. Would be nice to have a readily available version with the midis too.
Not much progress to report on Level 40 just yet, but I did make a couple changes so its layout is a bit more traditional. Also, Xfing, if you're working on placement for the next few levels, let me know if you want me to make any further changes to Level 6. If the conversion is still pending, I can try that too but I might need you to walk me through it.
Level 6 has been converted for several weeks now, just check out Dropbox and it's there. Haven't started populating it yet.
); that only left one big robot unless there's one I'm not thinking of. 
